She's won an Oscar, Golden Globes, an Emmy and even a Grammy for her work on stage and screen. Now Whoopi Goldberg has set her sights on the internet, making a six-part science fiction series for a horror website.

However, the series, Stream, which stars Goldberg as a 50-something woman plagued by dreams of her past, is unlikely to win the actor any new awards.

With its low budget and lack of pretension to the fore, Stream features creaky acting, a lacklustre script and enough shaky camera work to make the viewer believe an earthquake is in progress.

Yet while the end product may not live up to its billing, the intentions are admirable. Goldberg, who first made her name with a one-woman stage show, had semi-retired from acting to concentrate on presenting The View, a high-profile daytime TV chat show. The role, however, did not fulfill the 53-year old.

"I did retire," she told Reuters. "I hadn't made a movie in quite a while, and I lost my way with the things I was doing. It became entertainment by rote, and there wasn't a lot being done that I was interested in doing."

"But the idea that you can be at work and check out a webisode tickles me because that is the future. I can reinvent my way of acting so that I challenge myself and see where it takes me for the second half of my life."

Goldberg has a long-standing interest in both sci-fi and horror, from her Oscar-winning turn in Ghost to her appearances as Guinan in the Star Trek: the Next Generation films.

"Other science fiction movies you saw had no black people in them anywhere. Isn't that something? I wanted to carry on that tradition," she said.

"If I could be doing sci-fi and horror all the time I would be doing it. I have loved it since I was little. A good scare is great and I love the idea you can get people to feel things without having to show it to them."